Technical Leadership Contract Job Trends in the North West

Technical Leadership
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Technical Leadership skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 82 98
Rank change year-on-year +11 +16 +15
Contract jobs citing Technical Leadership 95 43 29
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.86% 2.22% 1.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 2.46% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 67 31 20
10th Percentile £397 £447 £463
25th Percentile £486 £463 £524
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £572 £525 £648
Median % change year-on-year +8.95% -18.92% +20.47%
75th Percentile £650 £648 £850
90th Percentile £738 £738 -
England median daily rate £588 £585 £610
% change year-on-year +0.43% -4.10% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 0
10th Percentile - £32.58 -
25th Percentile £103.72 £35.85 -
Median hourly rate £107.43 £43.22 -
Median % change year-on-year +148.57% - -
75th Percentile £111.15 £52.53 -
90th Percentile - £56.95 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £30.40 £38.50
% change year-on-year +130.26% -21.04% -41.53%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Technical Leadership falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,768 1,748 2,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.22% 90.20% 85.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,657 1,139 1,447
10th Percentile £300 £300 £306
25th Percentile £394 £392 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £562 £588
90th Percentile £670 £662 £682
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.25% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 96 262
10th Percentile £17.11 £14.16 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.74 £14.00
Median hourly rate £53.89 £31.08 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% +19.54% -25.75%
75th Percentile £74.26 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £84.88 £66.61
England median hourly rate £46.43 £28.18 £36.50
% change year-on-year +64.76% -22.79% -2.46%

Technical Leadership
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Technical Leadership relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Technical Leadership job vacancy trend in the North West

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Technical Leadership in the North West over the 6 months to 28 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Technical Leadership in the North West

Technical Leadership
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Technical Leadership.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Technical Leadership within the North West region over the 6 months to 28 May 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Manchester +7 67 £581 +3.29% 58
Cheshire -5 23 £498 +4.74% 8
Cumbria -11 3 £500 -17.36% 1
Merseyside -19 1 £625 +19.05% 3
Technical Leadership
England

Technical Leadership
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 2 (2.11%) CMS
2 1 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.05%) CICS
2 1 (1.05%) Confluence
2 1 (1.05%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.05%) SharePoint 2013
Business Applications
1 2 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.05%) Dynamics AX
Cloud Services
1 42 (44.21%) AWS
2 36 (37.89%) Azure
3 18 (18.95%) GCP
4 14 (14.74%) Serverless
5 10 (10.53%) GitHub
6 6 (6.32%) GitHub Actions
6 6 (6.32%) Power Platform
7 5 (5.26%) Amazon SQS
7 5 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (4.21%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (4.21%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (4.21%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (3.16%) Akamai
9 3 (3.16%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (3.16%) Amazon EventBridge
9 3 (3.16%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (2.11%) Amazon S3
10 2 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Copilot
10 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 10 (10.53%) Firewall
2 7 (7.37%) VLAN
2 7 (7.37%) WAN
2 7 (7.37%) Wireless
3 6 (6.32%) TCP/IP
4 4 (4.21%) 802.11
4 4 (4.21%) BGP
4 4 (4.21%) Cisco ASA
4 4 (4.21%) EIGRP
4 4 (4.21%) Ethernet VPN
4 4 (4.21%) IPsec
4 4 (4.21%) MPLS
4 4 (4.21%) OSPF
4 4 (4.21%) SD-WAN
4 4 (4.21%) VPN
4 4 (4.21%) VXLAN
5 3 (3.16%) DNS
5 3 (3.16%) HTTP
5 3 (3.16%) LAN
5 3 (3.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.37%) DynamoDB
2 4 (4.21%) MongoDB
2 4 (4.21%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (4.21%) Power BI
2 4 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 3 (3.16%) Amazon Aurora
3 3 (3.16%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.11%) Oracle Database
4 2 (2.11%) Oracle Exadata
4 2 (2.11%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.05%) Data Lake
5 1 (1.05%) DataStage
5 1 (1.05%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.05%) Metadata
5 1 (1.05%) MySQL
5 1 (1.05%) Spark SQL
5 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 7 (7.37%) Git
2 5 (5.26%) GitLab
3 4 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 3 (3.16%) REST Assured
4 3 (3.16%) Selenium
5 2 (2.11%) Flyway
5 2 (2.11%) Gatling
5 2 (2.11%) JIRA
5 2 (2.11%) Liquibase
5 2 (2.11%) Serenity BDD
6 1 (1.05%) Cucumber
6 1 (1.05%) gulp
6 1 (1.05%) JUnit
6 1 (1.05%) Mockito
6 1 (1.05%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.05%) Yeoman
General
1 24 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 20 (21.05%) Public Sector
3 6 (6.32%) Military
4 5 (5.26%) Finance
5 3 (3.16%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (3.16%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (3.16%) Retail
6 2 (2.11%) Legal
7 1 (1.05%) Advertising
7 1 (1.05%) Automotive
7 1 (1.05%) Banking
7 1 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 35 (36.84%) Lead
2 31 (32.63%) Architect
3 15 (15.79%) Lead Architect
4 13 (13.68%) Technical Architect
5 10 (10.53%) Developer
5 10 (10.53%) Principal Engineer
6 8 (8.42%) Technical Leader
7 7 (7.37%) Lead Developer
8 6 (6.32%) Senior
8 6 (6.32%) Solutions Architect
9 5 (5.26%) Java Developer
9 5 (5.26%) Network Engineer
10 4 (4.21%) Data Engineer
10 4 (4.21%) Lead Java Developer
10 4 (4.21%) Security Architect
11 3 (3.16%) Lead Software Developer
11 3 (3.16%) Security Engineer
11 3 (3.16%) Senior Developer
11 3 (3.16%) Software Developer
11 3 (3.16%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (11.58%) React
2 9 (9.47%) .NET
2 9 (9.47%) Node.js
2 9 (9.47%) Spring
3 8 (8.42%) 802.1X
4 7 (7.37%) RESTful
4 7 (7.37%) Spring Boot
5 6 (6.32%) AngularJS
5 6 (6.32%) REST
6 5 (5.26%) OAuth
7 4 (4.21%) AWS CDK
7 4 (4.21%) Kafka
7 4 (4.21%) OpenID
8 3 (3.16%) .NET Framework
8 3 (3.16%) Entity Framework
8 3 (3.16%) Nunjucks
8 3 (3.16%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (2.11%) Model Context Protocol
9 2 (2.11%) Next.js
9 2 (2.11%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 17 (17.89%) Cloud Native
2 12 (12.63%) Private Cloud
3 9 (9.47%) Operational Technology
4 8 (8.42%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (7.37%) Product Ownership
6 6 (6.32%) Cyber Threat
6 6 (6.32%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (6.32%) Onboarding
7 5 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (5.26%) Virtual Team
8 4 (4.21%) e-Learning
8 4 (4.21%) Replication
9 3 (3.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (3.16%) Security Posture
10 2 (2.11%) Data Centre
10 2 (2.11%) Educational Technology
10 2 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (2.11%) Insider Threat
10 2 (2.11%) Public Cloud
10 2 (2.11%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.21%) Linux
2 1 (1.05%) AIX
2 1 (1.05%) Android
2 1 (1.05%) Apple iOS
2 1 (1.05%) Mac OS
2 1 (1.05%) Solaris
2 1 (1.05%) Unix
2 1 (1.05%) Windows
2 1 (1.05%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (32.63%) DevOps
2 27 (28.42%) CI/CD
3 26 (27.37%) Agile
3 26 (27.37%) Microservices
4 23 (24.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 22 (23.16%) Mentoring
6 16 (16.84%) Software Engineering
7 15 (15.79%) Design Patterns
7 15 (15.79%) Infrastructure as Code
7 15 (15.79%) Risk Management
7 15 (15.79%) Roadmaps
8 14 (14.74%) Observability
9 12 (12.63%) Enterprise Architecture
9 12 (12.63%) Event-Driven
9 12 (12.63%) Problem-Solving
9 12 (12.63%) Test Automation
10 11 (11.58%) Architectural Patterns
10 11 (11.58%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 11 (11.58%) Root Cause Analysis
10 11 (11.58%) Technology Strategy
Programming Languages
1 14 (14.74%) Java
2 12 (12.63%) JavaScript
3 11 (11.58%) Python
4 10 (10.53%) TypeScript
5 8 (8.42%) C#
5 8 (8.42%) SQL
6 3 (3.16%) PowerShell
7 2 (2.11%) Bash
7 2 (2.11%) PL/SQL
8 1 (1.05%) COBOL
8 1 (1.05%) Go
8 1 (1.05%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 33 (34.74%) Security Cleared
2 31 (32.63%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.26%) AWS Certification
3 5 (5.26%) Azure Certification
3 5 (5.26%) Degree
4 4 (4.21%) Cisco Certification
4 4 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (4.21%) IBM Certification
4 4 (4.21%) ITIL Certification
5 3 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (3.16%) CCNA
5 3 (3.16%) CCNP
6 2 (2.11%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Certified Professional
6 2 (2.11%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (1.05%) ACSP
7 1 (1.05%) CCIE
7 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.37%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.21%) GDPR
2 4 (4.21%) QA
2 4 (4.21%) SLA
3 3 (3.16%) GRC
3 3 (3.16%) NIST
4 2 (2.11%) NIST 800
4 2 (2.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 1 (1.05%) PCI DSS
5 1 (1.05%) SOC 2
5 1 (1.05%) Solvency II
System Software
1 14 (14.74%) Docker
2 2 (2.11%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 21 (22.11%) Terraform
2 9 (9.47%) Kubernetes
3 7 (7.37%) Ansible
4 4 (4.21%) Grafana
5 3 (3.16%) Prometheus
6 2 (2.11%) Data Guard
6 2 (2.11%) IBM BigFix
6 2 (2.11%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (1.05%) CASB
7 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (1.05%) NetBackup
7 1 (1.05%) SCCM
Vendors
1 11 (11.58%) Google
2 9 (9.47%) Microsoft
3 7 (7.37%) IBM
4 5 (5.26%) Cisco
5 3 (3.16%) Aruba
5 3 (3.16%) CheckPoint
5 3 (3.16%) Ekahau
5 3 (3.16%) Palo Alto
5 3 (3.16%) SAP
5 3 (3.16%) Splunk
6 2 (2.11%) Fortinet
6 2 (2.11%) Oracle
7 1 (1.05%) Apple
7 1 (1.05%) Commvault
7 1 (1.05%) Dell
7 1 (1.05%) EMC
7 1 (1.05%) PagerDuty
7 1 (1.05%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.05%) Veeam
7 1 (1.05%) VMware